Sustainability of the trans-european transport networks land infrastructure to address large-scale disasters: A case study in the Czech Republic

Abstract

In recent years, the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development of transport infrastructure have been examined mainly from an economic, ecological, and social perspective. However, an essential aspect of the sustainability of the Trans-European Transport Networks (TEN-T) land infrastructure is also the construction and technical parameters of critical infrastructure objects. For this reason, the aim of the article is to define recommendations for the sustainability and future development of the TEN-T land infrastructure. For this purpose, the article presents the procedure for defining and modelling typical transport situations using the TEN-T land infrastructure and the procedure for identifying critical infrastructure objects of the TEN-T land infrastructure. Attention is also paid to the digitalization of critical infrastructure objects, which categorizes infrastructure according to its suitability for excessive and oversized transport using map data. The main output of the article are recommendations for the sustainability and future development of the TEN-T land infrastructure. These recommendations are based on the systematic development of TEN-T in four basic layers, namely legislative, capatitive, construction-technical, and technological. These recommendations are intended primarily for the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic and the Ministry of Transport of the Czech Republic, but also for transport infrastructure operators, i.e., Road and Motorway Directorate and Railway Infrastructure Administration.